The Happiness Thief by Nicole Bokat

Author:Nicole Bokat
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

NATALIE HEARD BEYONCÉ riffing loudly. “Turn it down,” she shouted once inside the apartment. What Cate had argued made sense, and yet, she couldn’t shake her worries loose. She’d felt the thwack, animal or person. She’d done that, caused that action, whatever the damage, no matter how disturbed the emailer might be, whatever his motivations.

The music, with its assertive drumbeat, made her think of shiny black boots marching. Natalie rapped on her daughter’s door. “Shush,” she shouted. When she didn’t get a response, she poked her head into the room. “I told you, Hads, use your earphones.”

“Yeah okay,” Hadley said. A moment later, the wires were dangling from her ears, and the noise had ceased.

Natalie entered her child’s domain. Hadley’s books were strewn across her desk and her Kurdish rug. She sat cross-legged on her bed, head bowed, thumbs texting. The goddess Durga stared down at Natalie with her black-rimmed, inscrutable eyes. She waved her eighteen arms, creating a juggling effect, snake in one, trident in another, sword in a third.

She walked over to her girl, kissed the crown of her head. “Aren’t you going to say hello?” Natalie plucked out an ear bud.

“Hey! You told me not to blast it.”

She stooped over, trying to decipher the girl’s messages. Before Hadley tilted the phone away, Natalie caught the identifying name. Dad.

“Why didn’t you want me to see it was Dad?”

“Do you mind? My texts are not public domain.” Hadley’s voice softened. “He just wanted to know if you were at Aunt Isabel’s workshop.”

“I skipped it this week to see Cate—which is none of his business. I don’t comment on where he goes or whom he marries.”

Hadley hunched over defensively.

“Tell Dad he doesn’t need to ask about me.”

“You tell him, Mom. I don’t want to get in the middle.”

She tousled her daughter’s hair. “You’re right. Sorry. Not your job.”

In her bedroom, Natalie stripped down to her underwear and put on pajama pants and a faded tee. She rooted around her drawer for Marc’s shirt with the Apple Computer logo and yanked it out. She carried it down the hall like a balled-up cotton rag that stunk from grease. In the kitchen, she stuffed the shirt into the garbage under the sink.

Once under her covers, Natalie viewed the novel on her end table. She flipped it open and tried to read, but the sentences didn’t gel into meaning. She texted her ex: Stop using our daughter to spy on me for ammunition. You’re not getting her.

Rarely did she turn on the TV atop her dresser. It was Marc’s to watch news in bed, left behind, forgotten. Now she grabbed the remote and scanned through channels, settling on a rerun of a medical drama in which a handsome array of male and female doctors was operating on a brain tumor. “There’s nothing more we can do. Cognitive function is gone.” She switched it off.

When her phone buzzed, she read Marc’s response: What’s with the paranoia, Natalie?

Towards the end of the marriage, he’d sat on the edge of the bed, his back to her.

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